Crafting New Narratives of Diasporic Resistance with Indo-Caribbean Women and Gender-Expansive People across Generations - MDPI
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societies
Article
Crafting New Narratives of Diasporic Resistance with
Indo-Caribbean Women and Gender-Expansive People
across Generations
Arita Balaram
Department of Psychology, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY 10010, USA;
abalaram@gradcenter.cuny.edu
Abstract: This study used participatory oral history and digital archiving to explore two interrelated
questions: How do Indo-Caribbean women and gender-expansive people across generations experi-
ence processes of storytelling? What are the challenges and possibilities of oral history and digital
archiving for constructing alternative histories and genealogies of resistance? In the first phase of the
study, twelve Indo-Caribbean women and gender-expansive people across generations participated
in an oral history workshop where they were introduced to oral history methods, co-created an
interview guide, conducted oral history interviews of one another, and engaged in collective reflec-
tion about processes of storytelling. In the second phase, four co-authors of a community-owned
digital archive participated in semi-structured interviews about their work to craft new narratives of
diasporic resistance rooted in the everyday stories of Indo-Caribbean women and gender-expansive
people. In this paper, I analyze how Indo-Caribbean women and gender-expansive people practice
resistance by breaking silences in their communities around gender-based oppression, shift norms
through producing analyses of their own stories, and reshape community narratives. Furthermore, I
explore how oral history participants and co-authors of a digital archive understand the risks associ-
ated with sharing stories, raising the ethical dilemmas associated with conceptualizing storytelling
as purely liberatory.
Citation: Balaram, A. Crafting New Keywords: oral history; participatory research; immigrant narratives; gender oppression; resistance
Narratives of Diasporic Resistance
with Indo-Caribbean Women and
Gender-Expansive People across
Generations. Societies 2021, 11, 2.
1. Introduction
https://doi.org/10.3390/soc11010002
Memories of the past—people, places, feelings, moments in time—are contested.
Received: 2 November 2020 Individual stories can challenge assumptions and accepted judgements that are reinforced
Accepted: 24 December 2020 through master narratives, especially the stories that come from the experiences of people
Published: 1 January 2021 who had previously been silenced or voiceless [1]. Oral histories are concerned with how
everyday people remember and narrate the past to consider how memories and myths have
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neu- influenced people’s actions and sense of agency [2]. Early oral history projects beginning
tral with regard to jurisdictional clai- in the 1940s focused on memoirs of “those who contributed to society or who were close
ms in published maps and institutio- affiliates of world leaders, what may be called the ‘great men’ approach” ([3] p. 4). Feminist
nal affiliations. and decolonial approaches to oral history require new archival imaginaries [4] and a re-
envisioning of what stories matter in understanding how the past becomes part of the
present. The process of archiving stories is not simply about collecting and organizing
stories, but about making deliberate choices about what to include, and for what reasons.
Copyright: © 2021 by the author. Li-
censee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Building on the work of intersectional feminist psychologists who argue for the
This article is an open access article
importance of decentering the stories of cisgender, heterosexual men in order to understand
distributed under the terms and con-
systemic oppression [5–9], this paper explores how storytelling between women and gender
ditions of the Creative Commons At- expansive people interrupts intergenerational silences about gender-based violence and
tribution (CC BY) license (https:// offers new ways of theorizing diasporic resistance. Drawing from oral history interviews of
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ Indo-Caribbean women and gender-expansive people across generations and conversations
4.0/). with co-authors of a community-owned digital archive, I discuss how documenting and
Societies 2021, 11, 2. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc11010002 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/societiesSocieties 2021, 11, 2 2 of 17
preserving the stories of those most impacted by gender oppression allows for narratives
of resistance to be written into history, while raising important ethical dilemmas around
the risks of storytelling and the dangers of enacting new erasures.
The research questions guiding this inquiry emerged from collaboration with an Indo-
Caribbean gender justice organization called Jahajee Sisters, whose mission is to address
violence against women and gender-expansive people in the Indo-Caribbean diaspora in
New York City through dialogue, healing, the arts, leadership development, and grassroots
organizing. In traditional social science research, research questions are shaped by identify-
ing “gaps” in the literature; for community-engaged researchers, questions also emerge
through relationships. I was both the primary researcher of the project and a participant; I
completed an oral history interview and was a member of the group of co-authors who
worked on the creation of the digital archive. In mapping the effects of social injustice,
researchers might choose to “study up” (i.e., study those who hold power) or “study down”
(i.e., study those who have been disempowered). I chose to “study across” because of my
commitments to thinking through how research can be used to support ongoing social
justice efforts in the communities I belong to. Starecheski [10] argues that when scholars
produce knowledge that can be deployed by a movement with which they are allied, they
become engaged in an iterative process of testing and refining that knowledge. In other
words, engagement and alliance with a social movement can contribute to scholarly rigor.
This approach also moves away from notions of the “detached researcher” and com-
munity members as “ingredients in our research recipes” ([11] p. 663). Women of color
scholars critique these notions of detachment from research, asking, “how do we reconfig-
ure ourselves as witnesses when our observations of poverty and oppression include the
communities of our families?” ([12] p. 662). Laura’s work on intimate inquiry provides
ways of thinking about the role of love in research, beginning research “with the end in
mind” ([13] p. 217), and the relationships that ground intimate inquiry “that would exist
even if the research did not” ([13] p. 217). This body of work provides a window into the
multiple positions I hold in relation to this research, which continue to shape my inquiry
into intergenerational storytelling and narrations of resistance in diaspora.
1.1. Literature Review
Silence around trauma is common, serving as a medium through which the effects of
experiences get passed down to the next generation. The consequences of these silences
within communities are vast, with younger generations unable to see elders as victims of
their own trauma [1]. Gender oppression maintains its dominance in the lives of women
and gender-expansive people by silencing voices that speak out against patriarchal violence
and heteronormativity.
The framework grounding this project borrows from Zinn’s [14] “history from below”,
which attempts to account for historical events from everyday people, rather than from
those in power. This work is also embedded in activist archiving, which rejects the idea of
being archived and instead “positions people as active agents of their own collections and
authors of their own accounts” ([15] p. 215). In other words, oral history is not only the
product that is created, but perhaps more importantly, the process of building new sources
of knowledge out of complex personal histories and experiences. This project considers
historical erasure as a form of violence and explores the ways in which archives can be used
to promote distributive justice [16], or the potential for material about the past or recent
past that was otherwise unknowable to become available, allowing people to connect with
historical events that were previously inaccessible.
The act of remembering can be evidence of resilience and a will to survive [2], but can
also jeopardize already fragile and tentative coping strategies [17]. The aim of this research
is to critically engage with the process of story-sharing across generations, recognizing
both its emancipatory potential as well as tensions that can emerge in conceptualizing
storytelling as purely liberatory. Speaking one’s truth requires vulnerability, and silence
is often used a coping mechanism to repress memories that are too painful to remember.Societies 2021, 11, 2 3 of 17
Literature that attends to the functions of silence makes visible the ways in which silence is
practiced in order to resist efforts to co-opt and commoditize community stories. Silence can
indicate refusal to participate in a process that simplifies complex lives into data [18]. Smith
argues that decolonizing methodologies “relates not so much to an idealized remembering
of a golden past, but more specifically to the remembering of a painful past, remembering in
terms of connecting bodies with place and experience, and importantly, people’s responses
to that pain” ([19] p. 146). In other words, a critical approach to remembering facilitates
people’s connections to one another, to ancestors who came before them who lived through
trauma, and knowledge-sharing so that survivors can see themselves in one another and
“learn familiar ways to heal wounds” ([20] p. 199).
The current study explores narratives embedded within the social, historical, and
political context of high rates of gender-based violence in Indo-Caribbean communities;
rising white supremacist rhetoric which constructs immigrant communities of color as
perpetually foreign; and ongoing heteronormative logics which tempt communities under
threat to stifle “transgressive” behavior. It is grounded in the stories of Indo-Caribbean
women and gender-expansive people in the U.S. who are the descendants of indentured la-
borers brought from India to the Caribbean to work on sugar plantations beginning in 1838,
in the aftermath of the emancipation of slavery. In order to understand patriarchal violence
and its manifestations in the present-day, it is important to begin with deconstructing the
historical context of indentureship and its gendered legacies.
1.2. The Intersections of Gender and Indentureship
Women who made the journey from India to the colonies were those most vulnerable in
their communities: women seeking escape from abusive households, lower-caste women,
widows, and sex workers. Women made up less than 30 percent of Indian plantation
workers during the period of indenture, and because they were scarce, they were sought
after, sometimes taken by force and sometimes leveraged by both Indian and white men [21].
In 1883, the Indian Emigration Act exacerbated the shortage of women with its intention
to keep married women from deserting their homes for the colonies [22]. Women who
did reach the colonies were able to leverage their scarcity for their own survival, “trading
up” in relationships to men with more money or status in either the plantation or caste
hierarchy [21,23]. Indo-Caribbean women came to be viewed as “morally loose” on the
one hand, or they were dismissed by colonial authorities as passive, non-confrontational,
and submissive to rigid Indian patriarchal values [24]. Bahadur argues that who Indo-
Caribbean women were, and who their descendants are, is “at its heart a story about the
demand for women’s bodies, for labor, for sexual gratification, and for procreation” ([21]
p. 55). Indentured laborers who were gender-expansive and gender non-conforming are
largely absent from archives and historical narratives, despite a long history in the Indian
subcontinent and its diasporas of the existence of more than two genders [25].
Ali argues for the existence of hijra in early 21st century Indo-Guyanese society as a
“third gender identity that survived transatlantic separation from India, colonial oppression,
and postcolonial suppression” ([26] p. 3), drawing from accounts they have heard from
family members and close friends about rituals hijras are known to practice at weddings
and births to promote fertility. While the terms “gender queer”, “gender-expansive”, and
“gender non-conforming” came into use during the mid-1990s among political activists [27],
understandings of gender beyond the binary of “man” and “woman” have existed pre-
vious to the use of these terms. As argued by King, adopting the terminology used in
North America and Europe to define the diversity of gender identities in the Caribbean
“that Caribbean people have neither created nor always identified with” ([28] p. 21) can
perpetuate epistemic violence, thus further research must be done to uncover the historical
meanings of gender-expansive and gender non-conforming in the Indo-Caribbean context
and expressions of gender diversity beyond these terms.Societies 2021, 11, 2 4 of 17
1.3. Current Study
At the time the Immigration and Naturalization Act was passed in the U.S. in 1965,
large numbers of Indo-Caribbeans migrated out of the Caribbean fleeing political and
economic turmoil as nations in the region struggled to assert their independence from
colonial rule. Forming large communities in New York City and Florida (with smaller
populations spread out in cities like Minneapolis and Atlanta), Indo-Caribbeans in the
U.S. migrated primarily from Trinidad and Guyana, but also from Jamaica, Guadeloupe,
Martinique, and at least 18 other Caribbean nations. Today, over 50 years later, the first
wave of Indo-Caribbeans migrants are aging, and their stories are disappearing with
them. These stories hold memories of growing up in the Caribbean during the Cold War,
witnessing the optimism and violence that comes with nation-building, and experiences of
migrating across waters to the U.S. The stories of women and gender-expansive people, in
particular, rarely get told, especially those stories that subvert dominant discourse about
their roles in resisting historical oppression. The second-generation hold their own stories
about growing up in the U.S., navigating racial and gender inequality in a new place while
working to piece together the histories that brought them here.
This research takes a critical aging lens [15] and anti-teleological approach to resistance,
frameworks which take seriously the knowledge that both youth and elders hold about
their experiences. A critical aging lens recognizes the ways in which intergenerational
dynamics are often only intelligible within a framework of heteronormative familial scripts,
which dictate rigid generational and gender roles [29]. American society is highly stratified
by age [30], so it is rare for people across generations to get to know one another, learn
alongside each other, or work together for similar causes. A critical aging lens considers
the ways that aging and intergenerationality implicate our subjectivities and relationships,
while resisting linear notions of development across the lifespan.
Like other intergenerational projects, this research refuses a unidirectional version of
knowledge transmission and instead frames intergenerational memory as complex and
multidirectional, with women and gender-expansive people across ages nurturing each
other as co-creators of their community stories. This work provides important justification
for new ways of challenging normative scripts or dominant ways of understanding and
performing relationships across generations to imagine new possibilities for intergenera-
tional healing. This research asks, how do Indo-Caribbean women and gender-expansive
people across generations experience processes of storytelling? What are the challenges
and possibilities of oral history and digital archiving for constructing alternative histories
and genealogies? These questions, among others, guide my inquiry.
2. Materials and Methods
For the first stage of the research, I partnered with Jahajee Sisters to design a method-
ology combining elements of participatory action research (PAR) with oral history. PAR
is a collaborative approach to research that centers lived experience as a starting point
for inquiry and asserts that those who have experienced historical oppression hold the
most knowledge about solutions [31]. The second stage brought together nine community
members, including myself, to co-create a digital archive. Four of co-authors engaged in
a reflective process about questions of access, privacy, and accountability through semi-
structured interviews.
2.1. Participants
In the first stage of the research, twelve Indo-Caribbean women and gender-expansive
people participated in a three-part workshop on the foundations of oral history: deep
listening, trust-building, and storytelling. The participants for the oral history series were
recruited through the partnering organization. The study was publicized via email outreach,
social media, and in-person at community events and was articulated as an opportunity for
Indo-Caribbean women and gender-expansive people across generations interested in oral
history and storytelling. It was also framed as an opportunity for community membersSocieties 2021, 11, 2 5 of 17
to build their deep listening skills and identify some of the barriers they face in their own
lives in telling their stories. Participants were informed that there would be an opportunity
for them to record their oral histories to be included in the creation of a digital archive of
stories from Indo-Caribbean women and gender-expansive people in the U.S. Interested
participants were given information about the location and dates of the oral history series
to share with their networks. They were also informed that childcare would be available
and that they would be compensated with a $25 (USD) prepaid visa gift card for their
participation in the oral history interviews.
Twelve people who attended the oral history series participated in oral history inter-
views at a local community organization in Queens, New York. Seven of the women were
between the ages of 19–25 and identified as second-generation, while five of the women
were between the ages of 38 and 69 and identified as first-generation. All participants
resided in the New York area, with four participants residing in Queens, three participants
residing in Bronx, two participants residing Manhattan, two participants residing in Long
Island, and one participant residing in Brooklyn. Ten participants identified as cisgender
women, and two participants identified as gender-expansive. All participants identified as
Indo-Caribbean, with two participants coming from an Indo-Trinidadian background, one
from an Indo-Surinamese background, and the remaining participants from Indo-Guyanese
backgrounds. Seven participants were born in the U.S., while five were born in Trinidad,
Guyana, or Suriname.
Eight community members were recruited to join the project as co-authors of the digi-
tal archive, for a total of nine co-authors. All of the co-authors were invited to participate
in semi-structured interviews about the process of creating a community-owned digital
archive. Of the four co-authors who participated in the interviews, three identified as cis-
gender women and one identified as gender-expansive. The age range of the participating
co-authors was between 22 and 28. One of the participating co-authors resided in Queens,
New York at the time of the interview, and the other three resided in Boston, Massachusetts,
Miami, Florida, and Washington, D.C.
2.2. Oral History Series
The oral history series was held at a local community space in Queens, New York. The
first session introduced participants to the community organization and to the oral history
series. Community members engaged in dialogue about the value of oral history and were
invited to share their hopes and expectations for participating in the series. As a group, we
decided on community agreements and engaged in three exercises to build their interview
skills: a toning exercise, a writing exercise, and a deep-listening exercise. Participants were
then invited to be matched with 1–2 people for an oral history interview in one of the
next two sessions and engaged in discussion about the structure of the interviews and the
guiding questions, which focused on personal history, gender socialization and experiences
of discrimination, resistance to systemic oppression, and solidarity across generations of
Indo-Caribbean women and gender-expansive people. Together, we created an interview
guide and ended the session with each person writing down one personal goal for the
interview.
In the second and third sessions, participants interviewed each other in their previ-
ously selected pairs/groups ranging from 1 h to 1.5 h long. While interviews were being
conducted, the larger group participated in reflective exercises related to their personal
and community histories, which included creating family trees and drawing self-portraits.
At the end of each interview, participants had 10–15 min to debrief, respond to each other,
and reflect more generally on their experiences as both listeners and storytellers in the
interviews. During this part of the interview, participants were asked: How did it feel to
participate in the oral history interview? Were there particular stories your partner shared
with you that resonated? What was it like to hear those stories? Even after participating in
the oral history series, were there topics that you struggled to talk about?Societies 2021, 11, 2 6 of 17
At the end, participants filled out consent forms where they were asked whether
they consented to the interviews being analyzed for the purposes of this research project,
and whether they consented to storing and sharing their interviews for the creation of a
digital archive. If they consented to storing and sharing their interviews, they were asked to
choose from a list of audiences they wanted to share their stories with, or to write in specific
audiences that they would like their stories to reach. The options they were given to choose
from were: public, anyone who identifies as Indo-Caribbean, only Indo-Caribbean women
and gender-expansive people, and only other participants of the project. Participants were
given these options to honor that some participants were not ready to share their stories
publicly but wanted community members who were experiencing similar struggles as they
had in their lives to be able to access their stories as a resource. The group of co-authors
were able to identify a content management software called Mukurtu, built by and for
indigenous communities seeking to preserve cultural heritage, which allowed for us to
manage privacy settings on each of the interviews so that we could honor participants’
boundaries around access. Transcription along with the original audio was shared back to
participants to confirm accuracy.
2.3. Building a Community-Owned Digital Archive
Recruitment for co-authors of the digital archive began in January of 2019, right before
the first oral history session was held. Interested participants were invited to participate
both in the oral history series and as co-authors of the digital archive if they wished. Three
of the nine co-authors participated in the oral history series, while the remaining were
recruited only for participation in the creation of the digital archive. Interested participants
filled out a Google form asking for demographic and contact information, experience
working on digital projects, and interest in joining a group of Indo-Caribbean women and
gender-expansive people in creating a community-owned digital archive. I spoke to all
interested participants before inviting them to join the project as co-authors. 19 people
filled out the Google Form; five people could not be reached after they submitted the form,
and six people were unable to participate because they were not based in the U.S. but were
invited to keep in touch for future opportunities to be involved.
From January to March, the group met over video conference monthly to build a
collaborative process for creating a community-owned digital archive. From April to
November, the group met bi-weekly to identify and distribute tasks in four areas: audio,
website, research, and communications. The audio team was responsible for editing and
transcribing audio and writing up short descriptions and key words for the interviews. The
website team was responsible for developing and designing each element of the website,
including a mission statement, a glossary of terms, and a “resources” document on further
reading about the lives of Indo-Caribbean women and gender-expansive people. The
research team was responsible for creating a collection development policy, guidelines for
interacting with the oral history interviews, and developing a process for obtaining virtual
consent from community members interested in submitting their oral history interviews to
the archive in the future. Finally, the communications team was responsible for designing
the logo, creating social media pages and a social media calendar, and planning a launch
event for November of 2019 to publicize the digital archive and engage community mem-
bers in dialogue around how the archive can be used to support ongoing social justice
efforts in the community.
In June of 2019, the co-authors were invited to participate in a semi-structured inter-
view about the possibilities and challenges of creating a community-owned digital archive
for constructing alternative histories and genealogies. Four interviews were conducted,
each lasting approximately 60 min. Each interview was transcribed immediately after
collection.Societies 2021, 11, 2 7 of 17
2.4. Analytic Frameworks
In analyzing the data from the oral history interviews and semi-structured interviews
with the co-authors of the digital archive, I used thematic analysis as defined by Braun
and Clarke [32] to find themes that emerged specifically in relation to the emancipatory
potential of storytelling and the risks associated with it. I also looked for how the co-authors
articulated the possibilities and challenges of creating a community-owned digital archive
to work against historical erasure and promote distributive justice. Below, I organize the
data into three themes: the emancipatory power of storytelling, the risks of storytelling,
and the possibilities and challenges of community archiving.
3. Results
3.1. The Emancipatory Power of Storytelling
The Indo-Caribbean women and gender-expansive people who participated in the
oral history interviews shared their experiences of the process, reflected on the power of
witnessing and being witnessed, and communicated their desires for more spaces to share
stories across generations in their communities. In reflecting on her interview, 37-year-
old Shama (she/her) shared that even though her interview partner, 69-year-old Irene
(she/her), has been in her life for a long time, they never had the chance to connect as
women with similar experiences. Shama shared:
“We connected as being women, not as being auntie and daughter or niece or
whatever. But actually like, we’re both women with these experiences, right?
And, I don’t know, I felt like an adult talking with her in this way because I
always see myself with elders as sort of being, even though I’m not really a
young person anymore, I always see this hierarchy in the relationship, it’s kind
of set already. And because I grew up with her, I don’t necessarily see myself as a
woman in these relationships. I always think of myself as a daughter or as a niece.
And it’s very different to talk with her about these things like marriage and the
difficulties of things that women experience that I wouldn’t have normally.”
Here, Shama highlights how it has been difficult for her to connect with elder women
in her life because of how her relationships to them have been organized through their
roles in the family (i.e., daughter, niece, mother, wife). Irene similarly shared, “being in this
intergenerational space, it makes me forget how old I am. I just think, well, I’m one of you”.
Irene also shared that while she thought she knew a lot about Shama, the interview made
her realize how much more they had to learn about each other. Shama went on to say:
“I actually hadn’t thought about prepping for the interview, but once you start
talking, and if you have a partner who you feel connected to, it actually just comes
out. And I think I was surprised at the amount of things that we talked about and
I guess to think about things I hadn’t really thought about, which the questions
help to bring out, or maybe I had thought about but never vocalized. I think the
space and in addition to connecting, I appreciated being able to reflect, and in the
interview particularly in such a focused way. Cause I think about my life this–
there are years that I can’t account for what happened during those years.”
In her reflection, Shama notes the importance of having a partner who made her feel
like they wanted to know more about her life and that her story was worth sharing, and
appreciates the interview format as a structured, focus way to enter into her story. Other
participants shared the importance of being witnessed and the need for spaces to be able to
connect in new ways that they were not able to in everyday life. In her interview, Sarah
(19 years-old, she/her) suggested that storytelling can help women across generations
connect from their shared lived experiences. She said:
“I always spend a lot of time with my grandma and grandfather. I even talk
to my great-grandma. And I guess storytelling, it’s really important because
are certain terms like racism or sexism, they might not know what racism andSocieties 2021, 11, 2 8 of 17
sexism are, but if you’re able to tell a story you’re able to show your opinions on
something, in a way you can provide answers for how you should deal with a
certain situation.”
Sarah shares here that while terms like “racism” and “sexism” might not resonate
with her elders, storytelling can give community members the opportunity to share their
opinions on their life experiences and pass knowledge on to future generations. Irene
shared some of the messages that she and other women of her generation were told growing
up that shape how she thinks about storytelling today. She said:
“We were taught that women should not speak out and not come out. You know,
we were always being suppressed and the males were more dominant and they
could go out and do whatever they want while we were kept in the house to help
with chores and never could speak freely what we thought or what we wanted to
do. And I taught my daughters them differently, that they should always be able
to speak their truth and express themselves and don’t be suppressed by anyone.”
Here, Irene shares the importance of teaching future generations that their voices
matter and should not be silenced. In their interviews, many of the participants spoke
directly to the listeners they imagined would be hearing their stories. In speaking about
her childhood and feelings of loneliness and disconnection she experienced, 42 year-old
Liloutie (she/her) says, “For anyone who listens to this, they must know that they’re not
alone. And if they don’t feel loved, know that you haven’t found your people yet. Keep
looking. We’re out here, and we’re waiting for you” .
Later in her interview after sharing her anger about how normalized childhood sexual
abuse is in the community, she said, “I urge you, if you’re a listener and you’re hearing
anything, anyone below the age of seventeen, it is illegal for you to engage in any sex with
them or any sexual behavior. It is illegal. Go to the cops. Don’t even finish listening to
this recording, just go straight to the police”. She went on to say that she wants to figure
out how to intervene into what she considers a “culture of complicity of well, it didn’t
happen to me” where the sexual abuse of girls is seen as acceptable. She addresses her
imagined audience directly, urging them to identify if harm is being enacted and to seek
out resources based on her understanding of how to intervene into cycles of abuse.
Made (22 years-old, they/she) also thinks that for future generations, it is important
to communicate openly about systemic and historical oppression rather than normalize it.
They said, “even though my hope is that they never have to experience that, I want them
to be prepared for the reality of it”. They went on to say:
“Especially if I were to have daughters or if I were to be an aunt for any nieces,
I want them to be fully aware of how rape and sexual assault happen and the
fact that it is never their fault, but there are ways that unfortunately you need to
defend yourself as a woman in this world. Even though, like I said, I hope that
none of them ever have to go through this, I think it’s so important to talk about,
though. And I would be comfortable talking from my own personal experiences
and being like, ‘This happened to me’. Because then also, I want them to feel
comfortable that if any of that were to happen to them, that they can come talk to
me about it, because I will understand.”
Here, Made shares the importance of talking to younger generations of women and
gender-expansive people about sexual violence and equipping them with the tools to
defend themselves. In their reflection, they recognize that sexual violence is never the fault
of the survivor, acknowledging the importance of survivors coming out so that those who
are looking for resources know where to find them. Irene reflected on both the joy and
sadness that she has experienced in storytelling spaces with women across generations.
She said:
“Telling my story and listening to their stories, even though they’re young, they’re
like 30, 40 years younger than I am, they still had exciting stories and sad storiesSocieties 2021, 11, 2 9 of 17
to tell about being oppressed by the male sex and abusive fathers and partners.
They should not keep anything secret. They should come out to organizations or
friends and share their stories and get help.”
Similarly, 28-year-old Rita (she/her) shared, “We’re suffering in silence and don’t see
people like us coming out with stories”, which she believes reinforces cycles of violence
and prevents community-wide conversations about trauma that has plagued generations
of women and gender-expansive people. Many participants noted that story-sharing is a
necessary part of breaking intergenerational cycles of violence, with stories serving as a
resource for women to make sense of the trauma they have experienced in their own lives
and the lives of people close to them. In her interview of 27-year-old Kushri (she/they),
22-year-old Rani (she/her) asked Kushri if she thinks any stories from the past should be
hidden from future generations. Kushri said:
“I don’t think any story should be hidden, I think that in fact, how we know that
history, the most tragic parts of history, our future should know about it. What
they should also learn is how we were resilient through it, how our ancestors
were also resilient through it. I think that the major problem is suppressing stories
and not airing them out. What I think should be hidden from society is certain
religious scriptures or the male perspective or point of view it was written from.
Somebody needs to go and rewrite these scriptures and absolutely take out those
ideas of non-inclusion, of patriarchy, just suppressing the masses.”
In her interview, Kushri shares the importance of sharing even the “most tragic parts
of history” so that future generations will know how their ancestors practiced resilience.
She also wants to see patriarchal narratives that have worked to exclude and suppress to
be transformed and rewritten. Shama similarly discussed how she wishes she had more
access to stories from previous generations of women in her family. She says:
“There are actually so many stories that I don’t know from previous generations,
from the women in my family that I wish I knew and I feel like if they had told
me, especially if they had told me from when I was a little girl, those stories might
have helped me to navigate some of the situations I have encountered. There’s
so many things I wish I had known about my grandmother and I can’t ask her
now because she’s not here. She died, right. So I think that we don’t really get
to ask questions and we don’t really get to talk. And I think that stays with us
and it affects the way we communicate with each other. It’s really hard for me to
talk to my mom about her life and sometimes I feel like she doesn’t want to talk
about it. Not because she doesn’t necessarily want me to know, but because it’s
just really hard for her and she’s just kind of locked away a lot of her stories. But
I wish that I knew them.”
Here, Shama reflects on how hearing the stories from previous generations of women
in her family, especially as a young girl, would have helped her navigate situations in her
own life. She also points out how quickly stories disappear if they are not shared, and how
she can no longer access the stories of her grandmother because she has passed. Shama
discusses how the expectation that women should stay silent and not ask questions of
one another affects how women communicate with one another, sharing how her mother
has “locked away” her stories as a result. Sarah also shares that it is important to hear
the stories of those who we disagree with and those who have enacted harm. She says,
“If you’re unable to see the other side and why someone is thinking that way . . . you
need to understand why an abuser would think the way he does in order to tell him that
he’s wrong, in order to enact some sort of structural change”. Here, Sarah shares her
perspective on how to intervene into gender-based violence: understanding what might
bring a perpetrator to enact violence and shifting the conditions that produce violence.Societies 2021, 11, 2 10 of 17
3.2. The Risks of Storytelling: Navigating Responsibility, Honoring Privacy
While participants shared the emancipatory power of storytelling, they also recognized
the risks associated with sharing stories. Anonymity remained important for participants,
and all but two chose for their stories to remain anonymous for inclusion in the digital
archive. Nine participants chose to have their stories shared publicly with pseudonyms,
one participant chose to use a pseudonym and to share only with other Indo-Caribbean
women and gender-expansive people, and one participant chose to share only with other
participants of the project with a pseudonym, but later decided she could not include her
interview in the archive because of sensitive material she shared about her parents that
might put her at risk if her anonymity was compromised. One participant chose to include
her full name and asked that her story be shared publicly. She shared that because so many
of the stories from the past are anonymized, she wants future generations to be able to
search for her story and know that it is hers. Finally, one participant chose to use her first
name, but requested that only other Indo-Caribbean women and gender-expansive people
have access to her interview because she felt that the content of her interview could easily
identify her.
After the recordings were completed, they were sent to the participants for review.
Participants were asked whether there were any edits they wanted to make to their inter-
views before agreeing to submit them to the archive. In reflecting on her interview, Sarah
noted that she got nervous at a certain point and her interview partner, 24-year-old Karen
(she/her) responded, “Even though I saw you got nervous, you pushed through it. Even
if you paused, even if you had a mental breakdown, it would be okay, just know. It’s
comforting . . . we can edit it out, it’s okay”. Here, Karen reassures her that no story is final,
and that they can always be rewritten.
Irene also shared that the interview process was difficult for her. At the end of her
interview, she says, “I still have to decide if I want my story to be out there. You can
listen and let me know what you think, cause I got emotional and stammered a little and
lost”. In this statement, Irene illustrates the vulnerability it took to tell her story and her
hesitation to have her story shared in its raw form. Liloutie also struggled with her decision
to ultimately remain anonymous because of her parents being on social media and her
fear of them finding her interview. While participants shared the importance of breaking
silences in their community, they were immediately faced with the potential consequences
of speaking out.
In her interview, Karen noted that we have to continue to be critical of stories. In
reflecting on the role technology has played in changing the ways that women interact
with one another, she said that social media and the internet can “help us build amazing
platforms or it can help us break each other down”. She went on to say, “They are able to
see like, I feel this way, and you do too, and you’re experiencing it there. There are methods
of helping myself and you”, but also shares that violence against women can be reinforced
through storytelling depending on how stories are told or how advice is shared. Here, she
raises the importance of not only nurturing bravery in women to share their stories, but
also building spaces where women are able to find appropriate support in return. Jayasri
also shared the ways in which she has navigated sharing stories of abuse with her daughter
given the emotional weight that stories can carry. She said:
“Sometimes we protect a young person. For instance, my mother’s mother
abandoned her when she was a baby. But she didn’t know that, she got a whole
different crooked story that they told her so that she wouldn’t feel abandoned or
you know, not loved. And it wasn’t until her mother was gone, my grandmother
died in her nineties, that she came to understand her mother gave her up. My
mother, for part of her life grew up in an orphanage. Her dad was an alcoholic
as well but he wasn’t abusive, but he couldn’t take care of her. They don’t tell
you until you reach a certain age where they feel you can handle it. So it’s not a
matter of hiding, but a matter of appropriateness as to, when do you reveal this?
When should this person know, or a community know?”Societies 2021, 11, 2 11 of 17
In reflecting on silences within her family generations before her, Jayasri distinguished
between hiding stories and waiting for the appropriate time to share something depending
on a person’s judgement of what the listener can or cannot handle at the time. She explains
that stories are shared once there is an awareness that another person might be able to
benefit from them, but it is up to the judgement of the holder of the story to decide when
the story should be shared.
In their interview, 22-year-old Lotus (they/them) revealed how the act of breaking
silences is not as simple as having the courage to speak, but to speak knowing that others
might not hear you, that those who do hear you might not be able to accept your truth,
and that often, a consequence of speaking out is rejection. They talk about the material
consequences they might face as a result of being rejected by their families (i.e., having to
find housing because they live with their parents), saying:
“I want to sit here and say, “Somebody told me that it was okay for me to be
myself and I just listened to them”, but I didn’t, because that fear of being rejected
from my community or that fear of being rejected from my family was so strong
that anyone could really tell me anything and I would just see it as, “Oh you can
say that because you’re not me”, “You can say that because you’re older”, “You
can say that because you’re not Indo-Caribbean”, or “You can say that because
you don’t live with your parents anymore.”
Here, Lotus lifts up the importance of understanding the risks associated with speak-
ing out and the different positions people might hold which place them at greater or less
risk. At the same time, sharing stories was considered an act of resistance and a healing
practice despite the risks and in some cases, because of the risks. Often, rejection led
participants to find communities that did accept them and allowed them to be their full
selves, yet questions of safety remained a central theme in participant narratives.
3.3. The Possibilities and Challenges of Community Archiving
Four of the nine co-authors who participated in the process of creating a community-
owned digital archive of the oral history interviews spoke of their experiences building both
process and product: a process rooted in collaboration and the desires of the participants
of the oral history project, and a physical website where community members could access
a digital archive of the interviews. The co-authors met once every two weeks over a period
of nine months to define the values grounding the project, identify the purposes of the
archive, and create objectives that would help fulfill the goals articulated. The co-authors
met in-person for a day-long retreat in August of 2019 and again in November 2019 for the
launch event of the archive where community members were invited to listen to the oral
history interviews, share their own stories and hopes for the project, provide feedback on
the website, and offer questions to the co-authors about the archive and its creation. Below,
I draw on interviews with four of the co-authors to understand both the challenges and
possibilities of community archiving for working against historical erasure and crafting
new narratives of resistance.
In their interviews, the co-authors were asked to share their hopes and expectations
for joining the project. Dharani (23 years-old, they/them) spoke of their desire to join the
project, saying “My hope was to gather stories from women and gender non-conforming
folks, Indo-Caribbean folks who are living in the States, to have those stories recorded. I
think that’s part of my own family research and stuff, but also because I feel like there’s so
much misogyny that gets normalized. We don’t even realize that it’s happening because
the stories get systematically erased so you don’t even know they got erased in the first
place”. Here, they connect the systematic erasure of stories from women and gender-
expansive people directly to the perpetuation of misogyny. They go on to say, “I was also
excited about the idea of working with a bunch of Indo-Caribbean women and gender
non-conforming people because my own community, at least in Boston, is pretty siloed.
It’s been really cool to meet so many other people with different backgrounds but with sort
of a shared history, because I’m so used to interacting with South Asians who are not ofSocieties 2021, 11, 2 12 of 17
indentured backgrounds”. In their reflection, Dharani points to how the community built
around the archive allows them to feel connected to their Indo-Caribbean identity, despite
other ways of feeling isolated based on geography. They went on to say, “I think as a new
project, it might have been easier if we were all in the same place, but I think it’s also nice
that we’re not all in the same place, cause we’re kind of creating a different, virtual-ish
community”. The benefits and consequences of the virtual/digital aspects of this project
are lifted up here, as Dharani reflects on how trust-building is important for this type of
work, particularly as the co-authors were meeting for the first time through this project.
Tarika (24 years-old, she/her) shared similar concerns, but was also impressed by how
much work had been accomplished despite having “started as essentially strangers”. She
says that it has been interesting to see how communication is different in the digital age,
and how it is possible to have these types of projects with people located across geographies.
She shared, “For me, one of the best things about this project is getting to connect with
a group of Indo-Caribbean people of approximately my generation. I didn’t really have
that growing up, I didn’t grow up in a big Indo-Caribbean community. I’ve always been
accustomed to being the only Indo-Caribbean person in the room, or in my school, or in
my community. So suddenly having this group of so many other Indo-Caribbean women
and gender-expansive people with shared experiences and a shared cultural background
was really amazing. It’s really empowering and affirming”.
She went on to say that it was especially important to be able to connect with people
of her cultural background committed to social justice, racial justice, and feminist activism
and to “know that impulse exists in the community among our generation”. She said,
“I think it’s a little different, even if you share certain values or ideologies or desires to
work towards social justice with other people, I think it’s different when people are coming
from a shared background and history as you, because then they tend to share more of the
same concerns. Because I feel like the issues that face Indo-Caribbean women in terms of
equality and justice are really unique and specific and not always represented in broader
mainstream movements towards social justice”.
Kimmi (28 year-old, she/her) also spoke of her desire to build community through
her involvement with the project. She said:
“I’m always really, really hungry for community space with other Indo-Caribbean
folks. And it’s not something I get a lot or have been around. I never felt like I
had a community of people, and just where, I don’t know, where I could be in a
different place where when I go home to Trinidad that kind of sigh and lifting
off of something to be able to experience that also while I’m here. So I just think
my hunger for that kind of connection is what made me really excited about it
and was my expectation going into this, this space where I can connect and work
with other folks who care deeply about the Caribbean, care deeply about stories.”
As a Trinidadian immigrant, Kimmi shared her desire to experience the sense of relief
or “lifting off” in her home in the U.S. that she experiences when she returns home to
Trinidad. She also shared her hope to connect with people who not only have a shared
experience as her, but a shared commitment and care for the Caribbean and the stories
of those descended from the Caribbean. Kimmi went on to share why her experiences
working in archives led her to this project:
“The part of archives that has always interested me has been community created
archives, so the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn, I remember when I first
went to that and I was just blown away and was like, wow. It resonated so deeply
in ways that other museums or spaces hadn’t. And then I did some work at my
undergrad archives, but never really saw myself working in archives because I
don’t really love the big institutional archives. They feel a little removed from
the importance of why these things are worth collecting.”
Here, Kimmi reflects on the importance of connecting archival work to a larger purpose
that extends beyond simply collecting stories/materials. With a desire for community alsoSocieties 2021, 11, 2 13 of 17
came anxieties around the hierarchies that exist within Indo-Caribbean spaces. Kimmi
shared her experiences of Indo-Caribbean spaces in the U.S. being Hindu-centric, reifying
notions of belonging to India, and focusing on the experiences of those who grew up in the
U.S. vs. those who migrated here at a later age. She also spoke about the class privilege
that comes with being able to do non-paid work, sharing, “I feel like a lot of the folks
who are in spaces, I feel like we all because we have the time to do it, tend to have some
class privilege in ways that aren’t discussed”. Finally, Kimmi spoke about the tensions
around being part of an Indo-Caribbean American space having been born and raised in
the Caribbean. She said:
“Knowing that the oral histories that were being done were being done by folks
who have migrated to the U.S. and that it was Caribbean American stories, I
think something I felt tension about in myself. Like how would I say something
about that if we were representing ourselves to be an Indo-Caribbean archive,
but we don’t really have folks who are currently living in the Caribbean being
part of it?”
The interviews served as intervention into the process of co-creating the archive, as
what was discussed in the interviews were part of developing a praxis of ongoing reflection
about how our decisions aligned with the original mission of the archive, to lift up the
voices of Indo-Caribbean women and gender-expansive people at various intersections
of identity. Kimmi’s contributions, for example, sparked discussion about expanding the
archive to include in the voices of Indo-Caribbeans outside of the U.S., including those
who remain in the Caribbean.
The co-authors shared other challenges that had come up in the work, particularly
around the language used to represent the stories the archive seeks to lift up and mind-
fulness around the ways in which language can enact implicit erasures. For example,
Dharani emphasized the importance of using gender-expansive language to avoid reifying
bio-essentialist notions of womanhood. Dharani also brought up issues around accessibility,
saying, “If my mom can’t read it, I don’t want to write it”, holding the group accountable
to using inclusive language. Each of the co-authors brought up the silences that continue to
exist among the stories that were collected, including an absence of voices from transgender
and queer people, as well as people from different class backgrounds, diverse religious
backgrounds, and elders over the age of 70. In reflecting on inclusion and visibility, Tarika
shared that our choice to use a content management system that allows for different privacy
settings allows us to “lift up people’s voices but also respect conscious silences”, which she
sees as important to archival work.
Lissa (22 years-old, she/her) spoke of the challenges of collecting stories and the
ways that she has witnessed people be protective and possessive of their stories, making it
difficult to bring them to spaces where storytelling is considered a practice of connection
and healing. As a mixed-race person with Chinese, Black, Indian, and white ancestry, she
shared that a member of her family was against her taking an ancestry test because of their
own internalized anti-Blackness, which she pointed to as an example of how shame and
erasure is transmitted intergenerationally. She said, “this generation doesn’t even know
the stories, but we inherit the trauma from those stories”, and reiterates her commitment
to breaking silences in the community and documenting our stories. Having grown up
in a community where the only Indo-Caribbean people she knew were members of her
family, she shared that she appreciated the opportunity to listen to the interviews and hear
different perspectives on how people articulate Indo-Caribbean identity and belonging.
Lissa also shared that she appreciated our choice to upload the interviews in their original
form, only editing the audio in response to privacy requests from the interviewees. For
example, in many of the interviews there is a great deal of background noise (i.e., sirens
from the street, music playing from a car parked outside, the sound of children playing
in the downstairs area of the interview space), and Lissa shared that she appreciates how
these sounds “set the place” and encourages people who submit their recordings to submit
them in whatever form is available to them.Societies 2021, 11, 2 14 of 17
These interviews were part of a reflective process to co-create a community-owned
digital archive, and after these conversations happened, we returned to the larger group
and identified strategies for the challenges we were facing in the moment, but also the
challenges we could anticipate emerging in the future. One challenge we spoke about was
making sure we would not simply be relying on those typically underrepresented in Indo-
Caribbean narratives to submit to our archive, but that we would have to be intentional
about building outreach strategies to connect with communities who are underrepresented
in broader historical narratives and within the archive. This was an issue we had not yet
talked about in the larger group, so the one-on-one interviews allowed for this conversation
to emerge and for us to reflect together about building systems to address these tensions,
including building a community outreach team.
Participants spoke of the importance of building a structure that has been conducive
to reflection, encouraging transparency about our practices, the stories we have been able
to collect (and not been able to collect), how we want to grow, and what kind of community
we want to build through the archive. In this way, the interviews were a space for both
reflection and action, as they informed how the group of co-authors thought about the
future of the archive, including the need for a “sunset plan”. Tarika shared her thoughts
about information in the digital age, saying, “It’s important to understand that what goes
on the internet don’t actually last forever, it can actually be sort of ephemeral, and funding
can run out, or the platform can get updated and make yours obsolete, so having that
long-term vision in mind and not assuming that what we create will be able to last forever”.
Here, Tarika raises the point that while digital archiving is a form of preservation, it is also
unpredictable, insecure, and precarious in its own ways.
4. Discussion
This study explored two interrelated questions: How do Indo-Caribbean women and
gender-expansive people across generations experience processes of storytelling? What
are the challenges and possibilities of oral history and digital archiving for constructing
alternative histories and genealogies of resistance? Central to my inquiry is a commitment
to understanding the role of storytelling in movements for gender justice in immigrant
communities. Romero and Stewart argue that “naming and defining experience, artic-
ulating and legitimating new and untold stories, and making space for those stories in
the wider culture is crucial work of social transformation” ([33] p. 12). In other words,
storytelling is a transformative practice because the stakes are both personal and political.
In analyzing oral history interviews from Indo-Caribbean women and gender-expansive
people across generations and conversations with co-authors of a community-owned dig-
ital archive, I work to understand how those marginalized by gender-based oppression
resist and shift norms through surviving, producing analyses of their own life stories,
sharing knowledge with their communities, and offering their visions for a different world.
As argued by Chazan, Baldwin, and Madokoro [34], listening can be considered a form of
activism, bringing attention to the critical work of reflection that is necessary in resistance
efforts to create social change. Furthermore, social change work like educating, advocating,
mentoring and record-keeping tend to not be considered activism to the same extent as
protesting and rallying [34], yet it is often women who engage in this type of work. This
research explores the active contributions of women and gender-expansive people using an
intersectional feminist lens, arguing against characterizations of Indo-Caribbean women
people as passive and non-confrontational in movements of resistance and speaking back
to the absence of gender-expansive voices in archives and historical narratives.
Oral history interview participants and the co-authors of the digital archive who
participated in semi-structured interviews shared both the emancipatory power of sto-
rytelling and the risks associated with it. More specifically, the Indo-Caribbean women
and gender-expansive people who participated as both listeners and speakers in the in-
terviews shared that the experience brought them to realize how little they knew of the
women and gender-expansive people in their community. Furthermore, they shared thatYou can also read
